D&D 5E I still want D&D and Beyond, but...

I'm with the OP a bit

The defeatest and uninspiring hatred in screeds like "let D&D die" or "D&D is bad for RPGs" etc from supposed fans is harmful to my ability to create for my players.

There's a toxicity in the discussions here, Twitter, Mastodon, YouTube, etc that crushed my interest in doing #Dungeon23 and running my two games this week.

There's no product I was planning on buying this week or probably this month. But there were games I was playing, in a ten year campaign world, that many here have sucked the energy out of. Those games aren't impacted by the OGL change. It's just me and ten friends rolling dice and telling stories.

I'm inspired by some of the actions by various producers, but at the same time I'm disappointed in those cheering for the downfall of a game that gave me hope during hard times and developed my ability to create, to write.

The way we exist online impacts others.

Right now that impact is making me less excited to welcome my players to the table tonight.

It's not about the downfall of the game at all! It's about the monopolistic position of a single company that publishes official content for the game. The game is much bigger than that. I certainly still plan to play "dnd." If I was interested I would still play 5e; I still have my books. But there are many other dnd-ish fantasy games out there, including retroclones of older editions.

But all that being said, I am still looking forward to actually playing because I enjoy it and enjoy the people I spend time with doing it. I have to remind myself, the hobby is not buying D&D, it is playing D&D.

Exactly!
 

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Blue

Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal
I think for me the most dejecting thing is that I had come to see Wizards of the Coast as an appropriate steward for the game I love. That got be back into playing in the 80s and has, either directly or though other RPGs spawned by it's concept, been a large part of my life. Many friendships made around this game.

I remember refreshing Eric Noah's page multiple times a day to find out more about a mysterious 3rd edition from the people who put out Magic:tG, but after that it was concepts like the OGL that came to mean something big. Even if not playing D&D, we "played in D&D's backyard".

WotC wasn't perfect, the hardcover-a-month of 3ed, 3.5, and later 4e was a grind. And 4e took a while to grow on me, and I was angry about the GSL.

But then came 5e, my favorite edition of D&D, and back to the OG. And then my not-quite-accepted hobby ended up going mainstream. A vindication if you will.

So to me, we were in the golden age of D&D to me - openly public, more and more players, and my favorite edition.

And then this. Again, D&D has been part of my life for 40ish years, and this feels like the steward of all of this has suddenly backstabbed me.

I know they are a corporation, they aim to make money. But what they have done to the community and to the 3PP infrastructure feels a lot more personal.

It feels like a betrayal.
 


I am feeling this post. I definitely feel like the discussion, the rumors, it's all infecting the joy I get from the game. I'm a naturally anxious person, and the uncertainty alone is enough to do a number on me.

But you know what, I'm going to sit down to run my Princes of the Apocalypse campaign tomorrow night and I bet we're all going to laugh, thrill, have fun together. Someone is probably going to groan at my terrible sense of humor. Someone is going to do a brilliant job playing their character, someone is going to come up with an idea that gloriously surprises me.

My love for D&D survived the Ambush at Sheridan Springs, survived TSR trying to crush just about every fan site on the internet in the late 90s, and it survived those upstart card game makers buying it. If the rumors over all this are true, I can't say how I'll feel yet, but presumably I'll still love D&D and gaming. Will it be "D&D" in the form of DCC RPG or Mork Borg or OSE or yeah, still, D&D proper, that remains to be seen.

I'm with the OP a bit

The defeatest and uninspiring hatred in screeds like "let D&D die" or "D&D is bad for RPGs" etc from supposed fans is harmful to my ability to create for my players.

There's a toxicity in the discussions here, Twitter, Mastodon, YouTube, etc that crushed my interest in doing #Dungeon23 and running my two games this week.

There's no product I was planning on buying this week or probably this month. But there were games I was playing, in a ten year campaign world, that many here have sucked the energy out of. Those games aren't impacted by the OGL change. It's just me and ten friends rolling dice and telling stories.

I'm inspired by some of the actions by various producers, but at the same time I'm disappointed in those cheering for the downfall of a game that gave me hope during hard times and developed my ability to create, to write.

The way we exist online impacts others.

Right now that impact is making me less excited to welcome my players to the table tonight.

I, likewise am an old, but there was never a store in any of the malls near where I lived. I'm kinda jealous of people that got to see them in person.

Plus a bunch of stores in malls. Malls!!!! (gawd I'm old)
 

I would wait for the official statement before deleting accounts and such.
The only thing I'd add to that is if you're locked into your subscription longer than a month-to-month situation, cancelling now and filling out the feedback form politely and constructively to explain your stance on the issue can be a way to let them know they're about to lose a customer while still letting you use the service until your paid time ends. I cancelled mine this way since I'm paid through October on the annual plan.
 

The Scythian

Explorer
Ignoring the original call and the entirety of the chat to selectively choose outrage is malinformation, which isn't lying. It's using the truth to mean different things.

I've bolded what you've done, because you chose to do the exact thing multiple times. The earnings report and the fireside chat both addressed much more than just microtransactions.

Your assumption that I read transcripts of neither is inaccurate and unfair.
The presentation is about forty-two minutes long, and it mostly focuses on Magic: The Gathering. Unless I've missed something, the first question about D&D comes around 31:30, and even then, part of the question is about MTG, and several minutes of it are devoted to talking about MTG products. The second D&D-related question is basically a chance for Chris Cocks to promote the upcoming movie and brag about how the first- and second-most viewed Paramount trailers on YouTube are for movies based on Hasbro products (Transformers and D&D, respectively). That starts just after the 39-minute mark.

So, while you've been suggesting that the presentation is huge ("massive" is the term you used) and covers all kinds of D&D-related stuff, the part that's of interest to this discussion is approximately eight minutes long.

What does that eight minutes consist of?

The first minute and a half is the host asking the question, and Chris Cocks interjecting to make an unrelated comment.

Then Cynthia Williams talks about D&D being under monetized and offering recurrent spending as a way to address that.

Then, Cocks changes the subject and talks up some MTG products, including a release of a product on Steam and a crossover with Warhammer: 40k. That's about two minutes. He segues into explaining that D&D is a brand that even non-gamers recognize, touting the upcoming movie and Baldur's Gate 3, and promising a slate of products on D&D Beyond, in hobby shops, from Hasbro's consumer products division, and from licensees. (He gives the examples of toys, collectibles, and games, by which I assume he means things like board and card games.)

So, not counting the initial question and unrelated talk, we're not talking about eight minutes, but more like four or five. And over half of that is Cocks hyping up the movie, Baldur's Gate 3, and a slate of unnamed products.

The rest? It's Williams stating that D&D is under monetized, giving the fact that non-DMs don't spend as much money as DMs as an example of how it is under monetized, and then explaining that WotC will shift from a book-publishing model to a recurrent spending environment to deal with that.

You seem to want to give Cocks talking vaguely about Hasbro releasing unnamed D&D toys at some point in the future as much weight as Williams saying that she believes D&D is under monetized because only 20% of players make the majority of D&D purchases and that, to address this, WotC plans to create a recurrent spending model like that found in digital games to get more money out of the other 80%.

The part that people are bothered by isn't one small part of this larger discussion that they're blowing out of proportion. It's close to half of what was said about D&D's future and, more importantly, it's the most specific thing said about WotC's plans for the game going forward.

So, tell me, since you're supposedly so familiar with the transcript. What "entirety of the chat" am I ignoring here? I've provided a link to the official recording of the presentation and enough information for people to follow along if they're interested. I've even provided a good faith synopsis. What am I ignoring?
 

Scribe

Legend
You're not buying the content on DDB, you're buying a license to use their service to view it basically. So yes, you lose everything you've bought if you delete your account.

Yep, welcome to digital, where a file sitting on a server somewhere, makes massive mounts of passive cash, that the dead tree version's cannot possibly meet the margins on due to, well, being a dead tree version.

Greatest scam of all time?
 

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